False-face computer vision camouflage patterns for Hyphen Labs’ NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism

HyperFace Camouflage

This is a temporary page. HyperFace launches Jan 16. Sign up for launch notification here
at Sundance Film Festival 2017.

HyperFace OpenCV Prototype ©Adam Harvey

HyperFace is being developed for Hyphen Labs NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism project at Sundance Film Festival and is a collaboration with Hyphen Labs members Ashley Baccus-Clark, Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, Ece Tankal, Nitzan Bartov, and JB Rubinovitz.

NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism is a transmedia exploration of black women and the roles they play in technology, society and culture—including speculative products, immersive experiences and neurocognitive impact research. Using fashion, cosmetics and the economy of beauty as entry points, the project illuminates issues of privacy, transparency, identity and perception.

HyperFace is a new kind of camouflage that aims to reduce the confidence score of facial detection and recognition by providing false faces that distract computer vision algorithms. HyperFace development began in 2013 and was first presented at 33c3 in Hamburg, Germany on December 30th, 2016. HyperFace will launch as a textile print at Sundance Film Festival on January 16, 2017.

Together HyperFace and NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism will explore an Afrocentric countersurveillance aesthetic.

For more information about NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism visit nsaf.space
How Does HyperFace Work?

HyperFace works by providing maximally activated false faces based on ideal algorithmic representations of a human face. These maximal activations are targeted for specific algorithms. The prototype above is specific to OpenCV’s default frontalface profile. Other patterns target convolutional nueral networks and HoG/SVM detectors. The technical concept is an extension of earlier work on CV Dazzle. The difference between the two projects is that HyperFace aims to alter the surrounding area (ground) while CV Dazzle targets the facial area (figure). In camouflage, the objective is often to minimize the difference between figure and ground. HyperFace reduces the confidence score of the true face (figure) by redirecting more attention to the nearby false face regions (ground).

Conceptually, HyperFace recognizes that completely concealing a face to facial detection algorithms remains a technical and aesthetic challenge. Instead of seeking computer vision anonymity through minimizing the confidence score of a true face (i.e. CV Dazzle), HyperFace offers a higher confidence score for a nearby false face by exploiting a common algorithmic preference for the highest confidence facial region. In other words, if a computer vision algorithm is expecting a face, give it what it wants.
How Well Does This Work?

The patterns are still under development and are expected to change. Please check back towards the end of January for more information.
Product Photos

Please check back towards the end of January for product photos
Notifications

If you’re interested in purchasing one of the first commercially available HyperFace textiles, please add yourself to my mailing list at Undisclosed.studio
Notes
Designs subject to change
Displayed patterns are prototypes and are currently undergoing testing.
First prototype designed for OpenCV Haarcascade. Future iterations will include patterns for HoG/SVM and CNN detectors
Will not make you invisible
Please credit image as HyperFace Prototype by “Adam Harvey / ahprojects.com”
Please credit scarf rendering prototype as “Rendering by Ece Tankal / hyphen-labs.com”
Not affilliated with the IARPA funded Hyperface algorithm for pose and gender recognition


©2004-2016 Adam R. Harvey. All Rights Reserved.

Jemima Wyman's Camouflage

Jemima Wyman  As seen by Dicky Chapelle, US special forces and 
their interpreter drink tea and discuss politics with a South Vietnamese 
Buddhist monk, near Khanh Hung, South Vietnam, 1962  2012

Showing at Milani gallery from 7 -21 October is a solo exhibition by Australian artist Jemima Wyman. The gallery is showing recent works based on her travels abroad which have the underlying themes of camouflage and political unrest. There are a couple of craft/sculpture based works but generally it is an exhibition of paintings. Her works are an eclectic mixing of references to current events using an Impressionistic painting style via the iconic pattern of military camouflage. This is a very post-modern style reminiscent of Gordon Bennett’s work which it may or may not be worth noting, is a member of the Milani stable.

Jemima Wyman As seen by Susan Meiselas, Muchachos await the 
counterattack by the National Guard, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 
1978-79  2012

What is the value of art? Coming to see this exhibition we find that there are two types of values; artistic value and market value. They both seem to be operating independently from each other as they been since the invention of the art gallery or more accurately, since the commoditisation of aesthetic objects. Here we see a perfect example of art in the context of commerce. You find yourself analysing the content of art works yet look at where it is hung then think “I wonder how much these works fetch for?”. 

Milani Gallery installation view.

Being in the Milani gallery and stable, I would think these works would be worth more than the average Joe Bloe art school graduate’s. Not to take away anything from Wyman, she has a particular voice and style that has been snapped up by art market, no doubt boosted by her recent inclusion in the Liverpool Bienalle. But this is the commonplace nature of art in a capitalist society and it has to be said that Jemima’s place as an artist stands in between art and market.  The prestige of Milani representation cannot be overlooked as it affects the reception of these works from the beginning and my particular reception is a negative one. The monetary value of her work does not match up to the work’s artistic value. Buyers of these works would be paying for her voice or style and her commoditised potential, the common grounding to which will guarantee a stable rise in market value of the works and Jemima Wyman’s who was once an emerging artist seem to have blended in seamlessly in the background of the high-stakes art market which one must agree is a beneficial way of being included in the grand narratives of art history.

Phyllis Galembo: Masquerade

West African Masquerade features 13 large-format color photographs, taken on location between 2004 and 2006 in the West African countries of Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Benin. Galembo has crossed cultural boundaries and earned national recognition for her work. Art in America has praised her combination of a "careful, almost ethnographic observation with a deep sense of mystical wonder," and the New York Times recognized the "dignity, conviction, and formal power" in her photographs.

Galembo's work has been driven by curiosities and questions such as, "What happens when we put on a mask and inhabit a different persona?" and "How does ritual dress contribute to our connection to spirituality?" Galembo considers herself an artist, not an anthropologist, and her decisions about color, light, and background have more to do with aesthetic desires than ethnographic precision. She is focused on the invention and expressive craft of costume-making and the potential for transformation that wearing such garments allows.

The elaborate costumes featured are often made of inexpensive materials such as raffia, carved wood, coarse fabrics, crocheted yarns, body paint, flowers, grasses, leaves, and sticks. The outfits run a gamut of dramatic designs and shapes, from striped-knit bodysuits to appliquéd fabric costumes as voluminous as pup tents. One from Burkina Faso, looks like a walking sunflower, its wearer hidden under a cascade of fresh green leaves. A ghostly white-clad figure from Nigeria is topped with a grimacing painted-wood skull worn like a hat.

Created for festivities and ceremonies such as weddings and burials, initiations, chiefs' coronations, and holidays like Christmas and the New Year, the costumes can be worn to disguise anyone, from a grown man or woman to a child. The subjects range from adults to teenagers, but Galembo does not know the identity of the individual beneath each mask. This mystery lies at the heart of her interest in costuming and masking — acts that allow the wearer to become something else, to change gender, or species, or even into spirits.

camouflage